Re: CP Bug Detected ?

From:

Bob Proulx

Subject:

Re: CP Bug Detected ?

Date:

Fri, 19 Sep 2003 09:36:53 -0600

User-agent:

Mutt/1.3.28i

Rivalino Matias Jr. wrote:
> I got a problem in cp operation. When I copy a FILE to a device with
> less space than the FILE size, I get the following behavior:
>
> address@hidden root]# ls -l teste.zero
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 172933632 Set 18 23:06 teste.zero
> address@hidden root]# cp teste.zero ./teste.zero2
> cp: writing `./teste.zero2': No space left on device
> address@hidden root]# ls -l teste.zero*
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 172933632 Set 18 23:06 teste.zero
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 138993664 Set 18 23:08 teste.zero2
>
> The cp doesn't remove the incomplete target file in this situation.
Yes. That is very traditional behavior.
> I would like to get a feedback from you if the behavior described above
> is a BUG. In case positive, I'd like to propose a patch.
But, but, but..., why is it a bug? The cp command tried to execute
your wishes to the best of its abilility to do so. It ran into an
error and reported it. It just does not feel like a bug to me.
Also, the file could be precious. I may have spent hours or days
copying a huge file. I don't want to lose that already spent effort
by having cp remove what it already copied. The proposal makes cp
less conservative in these cases.
Bob